Dan Wakefield - Going All the Way - A Novel

Sonny’s head ached from the rum, but he felt completely wide awake and terribly horny. He wondered if maybe there were any old girlie magazines left in the Elmer Layden game. He could take it into the bathroom and lock the door. As quietly as possible, he creaked down the wooden bunk ladder to the floor and stealthily made his way to the closet. The door whined when he pulled it open. He stood stock-still for a while, listening for Luke Matthews’ steady breathing, then reached his hand into the right-side shelves of the closet where his old games were stacked. He tried to feel the right box by its size and started pulling one out that began to rattle. It must have been the Monopoly set, and the little metal pieces were making the noise. He shoved it back in with slow care. He felt the box below it and was almost sure it was Elmer Layden’s Official College Football. He slipped it out little by little, holding the box above it with his other hand so he could let it down quietly when he pulled the Elmer Layden out.

Luke Matthews tossed a little and made a honking kind of snore sound. Sonny stood perfectly still, then after a minute or so of silence he tiptoed out of the room, holding the game steady so the dice wouldn’t make any noise. He stopped outside the bathroom door, listening for sounds from his parents’ bedroom right across the hall. All was quiet. He went in the bathroom and closed the door before switching on the light. Then he flipped the little lock on the door handle. Settling himself on the toilet seat, he carefully lifted the top off the Elmer Layden Official Football game box and set it on the floor. His heart was starting to beat a little faster in anticipation of the possible trove of erotic treasure just below the playing field. He reached his finger between the bottom part of the box and the cardboard playing field, lifting it off to reveal—nothing.

The secret storage place was empty. He must have burned the last batch of magazines in one of his fits of nauseous, self-hating zeal. He put the top back on the box and held it on his lap, trying to think of something. He was hornier and more frustrated than ever now. He set the game on top of the toilet bowl and eased himself onto the floor. There was a little round mat that was dark-green and probably wouldn’t show the jizm too badly if he managed to get his rocks off. He lay down with his cock out on the mat and pressed his body over it, moving back and forth, picturing again the way Marty the Jewish girl picked the little fleck of ash off her arrogant lip. He imagined licking it off for her with his own tongue, thought of eating her tight little arrogant cunt until it got wet and inviting, then ramming in the full throbbing head of his cock. But nothing worked. He couldn’t even get up a semi. After a while he realized it must be because he felt guilty, imagining that stuff with a girl that his good friend was hot for. Marty was Gunner’s girl, or at least he wanted her to be, and Sonny felt like he was betraying his friend by imagining all this sexy stuff with his buddy’s girl. What a shit he was.

Exhausted and guilty, Sonny tucked his cock back in his undershorts, picked up the game, and crept back to his bedroom. When he opened the door, the little reading light above Luke Matthews’ bed was on, and Matthews was propped up in bed on one elbow, blinking and staring at Sonny.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Sonny said. “I’m going to bed.”

“What’s that thing—that box you’re carrying?”

Sonny let out a long breath and said flatly, “It’s a game.”

“A game?” Luke asked, rubbing at his eyes. “What kind of a game?”

“It’s Elmer Layden’s Official College Football Game,” Sonny explained, and stuck it back in the closet.

“Oh,” Luke Matthews said, “I see.”

Sonny climbed up the little ladder and flopped on the bunk, burying his head in the pillow. Luke turned off the bed light and said, “Well, good night, son.”

“Good night,” Sonny murmured into the pillow.

Aching and sweaty, his mind was tormented by the mouths of beautiful women that pursed to a kiss and then faded into blackness, sudden glimpses of silken thighs that crossed themselves into his consciousness with a whisper and then were gone, breasts that burst at his brain through the lacy constriction of their tight brassieres and suddenly evaporated.… Thrashing and scratching, he became uncomfortably entangled in the sweaty sheet, too tired to extricate himself, too dispirited to care, until finally, as a gray dawn turned the flat sky the color of soiled linen, he passed to the blessed void of a dreamless sleep.

Sonny woke up around one o’clock in the afternoon, feeling as if he’d been drugged and beaten on. Everything ached, especially his head. The only consoling fact was that Luke Matthews had taken off, probably in pursuit of more salvageable souls. Little wonder. The craggy old bastard wasn’t any dunce, and he no doubt decided that a college-grad Army vet who kept bad company and played kid football games in the bathroom late at night was a more complex spiritual problem than his convict-holy-man training had prepared him to deal with. He could probably make more headway with your simple, ordinary murderer-rapist. Sonny at least respected him for realizing when he was out of his depth.

Mrs. Burns didn’t mention Luke Matthews anymore, and Sonny accepted an unspoken truce on the matter. The only reminder of the departed Holy Man was his book, which still lay on the coffee table like an unexploded bomb, a dud of the salvation-literature armory. Though Sonny resisted the temptation to bitch about Matthews’ visit, he became even crabbier and more irritable with his mother, and she became busier baking and cooking, turning out an orgy of cream-filled pastries, butterscotch rolls, and fresh berry pies. Sonny sat around the house stuffing in the goodies and despising himself, becoming more flabby and sullen all the time. He had quit calling Gunner in the evening for fear of getting Mrs. Casselman and having her snap at him, and nobody answered anymore when he called Gunner’s place in the afternoons. He stopped getting hopefully excited when his phone rang because it usually turned out to be for his mother. Once when his mother answered the phone and said it was for him, Sonny quickly licked some butterscotch icing from his fingers and rushed to the upstairs phone where he could talk in private, figuring it must be Gunner. It only turned out to be Buddie Porter, though, calling, she said, just to see how Sonny was. Sonny said he wasn’t feeling too well, but crossly refused her offers to take him for a ride or bring him some new magazines. He promised to get in touch with her if he thought of anything at all she could do for him.

When almost a week went by without any word from Gunner, Sonny began imagining all kinds of things that might have happened to his pal. He might have been turned down flat by the sexy Jewish babe and rolled up to Chi to take the job with the advertising agency. He might have decided to leave Indianapolis without even saying good-bye to anyone, even his friends. Or maybe, worst of all, he didn’t think of Sonny as a real friend after all; maybe he’d got bored with Sonny and gone back to his old crew of big-timers, wondering how he’d ever got mixed up with a nobody like Sonny Burns.

Sonny’s moping around got so bad that his father came into the den one evening while Sonny was watching TV and drinking a Pepsi, and rubbed his thumb against the tips of his fingers in an awful, discomforting sign that he was about to “have a talk” with his son.

“You ought to get out of the house, get some sun,” Mr. Burns said.

“Yes, I will,” Sonny mumbled.

Mr. Burns cleared his throat and made the little nervous forward motion of his knees, as if trying to make sure of his stance. His face was flushed and frowning. “You can’t let yourself get down ” he said.